Back in April CTUP published our landmark study “Putting Politics Over Pensions,” which graded the major money managers on how often they supported radical ESG shareholder resolutions through the proxy voting process. We made the case that when money managers like BlackRock, State Street, UBS, and JP Morgan support ESG resolutions – such as requiring firms to divest in oil and gas holdings — they violate their fiduciary duty to their clients.

The study got widespread attention in the media, including a full-length editorial in the WSJ.

Since the study was released, many of the major money management firms with retirement funds holding trillions of dollars of stocks, have begun renouncing ESG resolutions. BlackRock, which was once the greatest supporter of radical climate change and racial quota resolutions, has even now boasted of their change of heart.

Data released this week by the world’s largest ($9.4 trillion) asset management company: “BlackRock’s support for shareholder proposals on environmental and social issues fell sharply for the second year in a row as it refused to back resolutions it deemed too didactic or pointless.”

This past year it voted for only 7% of ESG resolutions compared to a yes vote on nearly half the resolutions in 2021 and 22% last year.

BlackRock said its support had fallen “because so many shareholder proposals were overreaching, lacking economic merit, or simply redundant.” But it also admitted that the “bad publicity” from studies like ours was causing clients to remove money from BlackRock accounts.

In other words, our research is helping direct trillions of dollars of proxy voting away from “woke” initiatives that put shareholder value and mom and pop’s pensions at risk.

This is good news for America and great news for investors.

Read our groundbreaking report: